Archives for category: Class size
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Domingo Morel: State Takeover is the Wrong Answer for Providence Schools

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
12

 

Domingo Morel is a scholar of state takeovers. He wrote a book called Takeover:  Race, Education, and American Democracy. He was also a member of the team from Johns Hopkins that studied the problems of the Providence schools. And, what’s more, he is a graduate of the Providence public schools.

In other words, he has solid credentials to speak about the future of the Providence public schools. The schools are already under mayoral control, so discount that magic bullet that reformers usually prefer.

He knows from his study of state takeovers that they do not address root causes of school dysfunction.

Consider this:

As a scholar of state takeovers of school districts, I have seen how communities desperate to improve their schools placed their hopes in state takeovers, only to be disappointed. While the long-term effects of takeovers on student achievement often fail to meet expectations, the effects on community engagement are devastating. In most takeovers, states remove local entities — school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and community organizations — from decision-making about their schools.

Those who have read the Johns Hopkins report are aware that the absence of community engagement is a major issue in the Providence Schools. Demographic differences are a major reason. Students of color represent more than 85% of the student population and English Language Learners represent nearly 30%, while more than 80% of the teachers are white. These differences are not trivial…

To help cultivate community engagement, the state could partner with a collective of community organizations, including Parents Leading for Educational Equity, ProvParents, the Equity Institute, the Latino Policy Institute, CYCLE and the Providence Student Union, which have come together over concerns with the Providence schools.

Finally, state officials should examine their role in contributing to the current conditions in Providence. State funding, particularly to support English Language Learners and facilities, has been inadequate. In addition, the absence of a pipeline for teachers of color is a state failure.

What a surprising set of recommendations: increase the pipeline of teachers of color. Build community engagement. Work with community organizations. Increase state funding.

He might also have added: Reduce class sizes. Provide wraparound services for students and adults. Open health clinics for families in the schools or communities. Improve and increase early childhood education. Beef up arts education and performance spaces in every school.

It takes a village, not a flock of hedge fund managers or a passel of fly-by billionaires hawking charter schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Class size, Creativity, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

NYC: Rally and Protest to Reduce Class Sizes!

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
5

 

This Tuesday on June 11 at noon at City Hall, Network for Public Education is co-sponsoring a rally with Class Size Matters and many other organizations to urge NYC to allocate specific funding in next year’s budget towards reducing class size; please come if you can and bring your kids; they have the day off from school. 

 

Smaller classes have been linked with more learning and better student outcomes in every way that can be measured – students in smaller classes get better grades and better test scores, have fewer disciplinary problems, and graduate from high school and college at higher rates.  

 

Meanwhile,  NYC public schools have the largest class sizes in the state – and suffer from class sizes 15-30% bigger than students in the rest of the state on average.  More than 330,000 NYC students were in crammed into classes of 30 or more this fall. 

 

Here is a flyer with more information; please post it in your school and share it with others.  And please attend the rally on Tuesday if you can! 

 

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, New York City

UTLA Reacts to Loss on Measure EE

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
5

Measure EE went down to defeat in Los Angeles yesterday. It was an effort to raise taxes mostly on commercial real estate to raise $500 million a year for the schools—to reduce class sizes, hire librarians, nurses, social workers, and psychologists and to expand classes in art and music. An election this important should appear during a general election, when most people vote.

 

For immediate release

CONTACT: Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net<mailto:Abakalis@UTLA.net>

To watch the live 1:30 PM press conference, click here<https://www.facebook.com/UTLAnow/videos/2390124311212283/>.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl on Measure EE

We are proud of the work we poured into the Measure EE campaign. Our members participated in precinct walks, community events, and phone banks, talking to voters across the city. We know the community fundamentally trusts educators and supports the demands we are making for our schools, with UTLA’s strike in January being the historic case in point.

We faced a scorched-earth opposition, led by the LA Chamber of Commerce and aided by the Howard Jarvis Association and key Trump allies like Geoffrey Palmer. They had one purpose: to defend corporate profits at the expense of the students of our city.

The No on EE forces created lies about how the tax would work and fanned the flames of economic insecurity. They attacked not just LAUSD but the civic institution of public education and the educators who serve our students. They drove a destructive individualistic message that encouraged voters not to think about the needs of our students or the broader city.

Measure EE was just the beginning of the fight for funding sparked by our strike. It’s simply unsustainable for the richest state in the nation to rank 44th out of 50 in per-pupil funding. We are resolved to keep organizing for measures like Schools and Communities First on the November 2020 ballot, which would close commercial property tax loopholes and restore $11 billion for schools and community services.

There were ground-breaking elements to the Measure EE campaign that make us stronger for the work ahead. The City of LA is talking about the chronic underfunding of public schools in a way it never has. We partnered with community organizations focused on increasing voter participation in working-class communities and communities of color. In a district with 85% low-income students and 90% students of color, this is both righteous and necessary. We built a broad community/labor/elected coalition around addressing school funding that has not existed before in LA. That coalition, which includes some unlikely partners, has decidedly landed on the side of progressive taxation — taxation of business and corporations — as the pathway to improved school funding.

The agenda to starve our public schools will not win as long as we continue to build our movement.

Today is hard — but educators face and overcome obstacles every day. There is no other option. Like we do every day, we will continue to fight for our students.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Librarians, Los Angeles

Leonie Haimson: Join Us for a Rally and a Party!

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2019 //
2

 

Dear Friends-

1. Save the date! On Tuesday June 11 at noon at City Hall we will be rallying for smaller classes, urging the Mayor and the City Council to allocate funds in this year’s budget for class size reduction. Please come and bring your kids – they have the day off from school! Co-sponsored by Class Size Matters, NYC Kids PAC and the Network for Public Education. A flyer to post & distribute in your schools will be ready soon.

Click to access rally-v6.pdf

2. Last week in court we won a terrific victory when DOE withdrew its proposal to close PS 25, a small school in Bed Stuy. Because of very small classes, experienced teachers and a collaborative principal, PS 25 outperforms the city and the state in test scores, despite enrolling 100% low-income kids, 100% Black and Latino, 27% students with disabilities and about 30% homeless. From the bench, Judge Katherine Levine urged DOE to support the growth of this excellent school while ensuring that its class sizes remain small. She said, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see one of the reasons the school has made so much progress is because of its small class sizes.”  More about this wonderful news on my blog and in the Brklyner.

3. Finally, please remember to buy a ticket to our Annual Skinny Award Dinner on Wednesday June 19; honorees include our amazing Attorney General Tish James and NYC Kids PAC.

And please forward this message to others who care, Leonie

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-529-3539

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Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org

NYC: Class Size Champion Strikes Again, in Court

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
6

 

Leonie Haimson is a force of nature. She and her! Student Privacy allies beat Bill Gates’ $100 Million inBloom data-collection project. She and her parent allies forced the NYC Department of Education to back down and keep open high-performing low-enrollment PS 25 in Brooklyn. Now she and her allies are going back to court to fight State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia over the matter of class size in NYC. 

Give up, MaryEllen!

Haimson sends out the alert: Game on!

On Thursday May 23, 2019 the Education Law Center filed an appeal on behalf of nine NYC parents, Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, urging the Appellate court to order the Department of Education to reduce class size in all grades as the Contracts for Excellence law requires. Our original lawsuit, Agostini vs. Elia, was filed in April 2018 when the State Education Commissioner refused to take action and enforce the law.   

In December 2018, Acting Supreme Court Judge Henry Zwack ruled against us in a brief decision that engaged with neither the law nor the facts of the case, and merely claimed that this was a matter for the Commissioner to decide.  She in turn had argued that any class size obligations on the part of the DOE had expired years ago. Our appeal demonstrates how that view is false — and if the Legislature wanted to eliminate DOE’s legal obligation to lower class size, they would have changed the law.  Oral arguments in the case will likely occur late this summer.

The press release from ELC is here and below. — Leonie Haimson 

LAWSUIT TO ENFORCE MANDATE TO REDUCE CLASS SIZE IN NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS MOVES FORWARD
The plaintiffs in a legal action to enforce a mandate to reduce class size in New York City public schools filed their brief on May 23 in an Albany appellate court. The lawsuit began in June 2017 as an administrative petition demanding that the State Commissioner of Education, MaryEllen Elia, order the NYC Schools Chancellor, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York City Board of Education to comply with the law. When the Commissioner dismissed the petition, the plaintiffs brought the case to court.
The plaintiffs in the case are nine New York City public school parents, as well as Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, two prominent New York public school advocacy organizations. Education Law Center Senior Attorney Wendy Lecker is representing the plaintiffs.
Under a state law known as the Contract for Excellence, or “C4E,” the NYC Chancellor and the Department and Board of Education are required to develop a five-year plan to reduce class size to target averages in three grade spans: K-3, 4-8, and 9-12. After the law was enacted in 2007, New York City developed a plan which was approved by the Commissioner in 2007.
The City never fulfilled the 2007 plan within five years, or by 2012. Nor has the City implemented the 2007 plan or any other plan that complies with the C4E law. As a result, class sizes now are as large or even larger than they were in 2007. Between 2007-2016, for example, the number of students in classes of 30 or more in grades 1-3 increased by 4,000% to over 40,000.
In dismissing the Petition in 2017, the Commissioner ruled that since the 2007 plan “concluded” in 2012, or five years after it was approved, the petition was moot even though the City never implemented the plan. The plaintiffs challenged the Commissioner’s decision in State Supreme Court, which “deferred” to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the term “within five years” in the C4E law.
The plaintiffs have now appealed to the Appellate Division. They argue that the Commissioner misinterpreted the C4E law. The five-year endpoint in the law was the deadline the Legislature imposed to accomplish class size reduction. It was not the date at which the City’s legal obligation would magically disappear. Moreover, the lower court wrongly deferred to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the C4E law.
“The NYC Department of Education has violated the Contract for Excellence Law for over a decade because of its refusal to reduce class size,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “As a result, more than 336,000 students were crammed into classes of thirty or more this fall. Our thanks to the Education Law Center for representing Class Size Matters and nine NYC parent plaintiffs in this important appeal. If the Appellate Court decides on the basis of the law and the facts, it will require that NYC students finally receive their right to a sound basic education with the smaller classes they need and deserve.”
“Class size is an important factor in determining whether students have the opportunity to succeed in school. Ensuring that every student has a chance to succeed is our moral duty. Following the law shouldn’t be a choice. We hope the court ensures that the students of New York receive their constitutionally granted right to ‘a sound basic education,'” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, Operations and Policy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education.
Oral argument in the appeal will likely take place in the late summer.
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
Categories Accountability, Class size, Education Reform, New York City

Julian Vasquez Heilig: “Did You See the Numbers?” “Yes, I Did.”

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2019 //
5

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a leading authority on the subjects of equity and social justice. His blog is one of the brightest spots on the Internet because of his scholarship and creative use of graphics. He has been a prominent member in the California chapter of the NAACP.

In this post, he refutes the claim that charter schools in California produce results better than public schools. Despite their advantages, their academic results are about the same as public schools. The hype for them comes from their well-funded propaganda and lobbying operation.

He writes:

Even with the limited (and selection biased?) sample of comparison neighborhood public schools, charter school students nearly perform statistically the same as neighborhood school students. The differences are in the hundredths of a standard deviation in Central California and Southern California and tenths of a standard deviation in Bay Area and South Bay. By comparison, other education policies such as class size reduction and high quality Pre-K show 400% more overall impact on student success than charter schools.[5]Considering the data, charter schools are not having the instant impact that proponents purport….

The education policy discourse in the Trump and Obama eras has been focused on empowering schools choice while remaining silent about the purposeful inequality in financial resources that plague low-income schools in the United States. The latest research has identified the inequality and shown the positive impacts of properly funding schools. The problem is that the wealthy have improperly influenced the equalization mechanisms in each state and have stacked the deck against low-income districts, schools and students. We must substantially change the political conservation about education policy away from school choice to resource inequality if we are to offer a quality education to every student in the United States.

 

Categories Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Justice

Oregon: While Teachers Strike, Corporate Reformers Kill Bills to Stop Testing Pre-K-2 and to Expand Opt Out

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2019 //
14

 

Corporate Reformers in Oregon joined with their allies in the business community to kill a bill (HB 2318) called “Too Young to Test,.” Modeled on laws in New York and New Jersey, the bill would have prohibited mandatory standardized testing from pre-k through grade two. Most of the testimony favored the bill.

The purpose of HB 2318:

Prohibits State Board of Education from requiring, and school districts from administering, certain assessments to students enrolled or preparing to enroll in prekindergarten through grade two. Makes exception for assessments administered for diagnostic purposes as required under state or federal law.

The Corporate Reformers and the business community killed it. 

No one, the Corporate Reformers insist, is ever too young to test.

They also focused on killing a bill to strengthen Oregon’s opt-out law.Then they killed a bill to strengthen Oregon’s opt out law. (SB 433). Here is their letter of opposition to SB433.

They claim they need the test scores so they can effectively advocate to meet student needs. No one should be allowed to opt out of testing, no matter how young.

Apparently they don’t know that standardized testing is highly correlated with family income and family education. They should read Daniel Koretz’s The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.

Stand for Children was part of the pro-testing lobby. SFC is heavily funded by the Gates Foundation and other pro-testing, pro-privatization foundations. Stand for Children advocates for high-stakes testing, charter schools, and test-based evaluation of teachers. Dana Hepper of “The Children’s Institute” also lobbied against these bills and in support of standardized testing of kindergartners; she previously worked for Stand for Children. In addition to endorsing the joint statements, here is her testimony supporting mandated standardized tests for children of all ages and opposing opt out.

They say they need the scores so they know what children need.

BUT, THE CORPORATE REFORMERS HAVE THE TEST SCORES NOW AND THEY ARE NOT ADVOCATING FOR STUDENT NEEDS.

Teachers in Oregon are on strike to advocate for smaller classes, nurses, mental health counselors, librarians, and social workers.

Where are the corporate reformers?

Fighting for more standardized testing, even for kindergartners! Fighting parents’ right to opt their children out of standardized testing!

Are they joining the teachers to demand more investment in schools? No.

Are they on the picket lines demanding smaller classes? No.

Are they lobbying for increased funding for nurses, social workers, librarians, and mental health counselors? No.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Opt Out, Oregon, Standardized Testing

Oregon: Tens of Thousands of Teachers Walk Out, Closing 600 Schools, to Protest Working Conditions

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
3

 

Thousands of teachers in Oregon joined the Red4Ed Movement, walking out to protest overcrowded classes and a lack of support staff, including school nurses and mental health counselors. 

Nearly 45% of all reported classes in Oregon have 26 students or more,” said John Larson, a high school English teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association.
Some classes have 56 or more students, he said.
So instead of going to class, many teachers were taking unpaid days off work to flood at least six protest sites across the state.
The mass exodus of teachers has already forced 25 school districts to close 600 schools Wednesday, Larson said.
The biggest district to close, Portland Public Schools, has more than 46,000 students.
“This is historic,” Larson told a sea of red-shirted teachers, parents and students at a riverfront rally in downtown Portland. “This is what we came here for today — is to make sure that we fund our schools.”
It’s not just funding for smaller class sizes. Union members also want:
— More school counselors. Oregon has half the school counselors that national experts suggest. And the shortage of mental health counselors is a big concern across the country — especially after all the recent school shootings.
— More school librarians. Currently, there are only 158 school librarians in Oregon — less than one librarian per district.
— More school nurses. There’s only one nurse for every 5,481 students. That’s four times less than national recommendations, the OEA said.
— A restoration of art, music and physical education programs that have been cut by budget constraints.
— More funding for school supplies. The OEA said 94% of teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies “to make up the difference between what their students need and what districts can provide.”
— The passage of state House Bill 3427, dubbed the “Student Success Act.” The bill would increase funding for K-12 education by 18%.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Oregon, Resistance, Teachers

Steven Singer Has a Very Innovative Idea for Schools: More People

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
19

 

Steven Singer goes through the long list of failed innovations that “Reformers” have foisted on the schools.

Think how many billions have been wasted on standardized tests, interim assessments, data coaches, test-based evaluations, Common Core, etc.

He has an idea for an innovation that he is certain will make a difference: more people. 

Have you walked into a public school lately? Peak your head into the faculty room. It’s like snatching a glance of the flying Dutchman. There are plenty of students, but at the front of the overcrowded classrooms, you’ll find a skeleton crew.

Today’s public schools employ 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by 800,000 students. So if we want today’s children to have not better but just the same quality of services kids received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

Instead, our children are packed into classes of 25, 30 even 40 students!

And the solution is really pretty simple – people not apps. Human beings willing and able to get the job done.

If we were fighting a war, we’d find ways to increase the number of soldiers in our military. Well, this is a war on ignorance – so we need real folks to get in the trenches and win the battle.

We need teachers, counselors, aides and administrators promoted from within and not functionaries from some think tank’s management program.

We need more people with masters or even more advanced teaching degrees – not business students with a three-week crash course in education under their belts who are willing to teach for a few years before becoming a self-professed expert and then writing education policy in the halls of government.

We need people from the community taking a leadership role deciding how our schools should be run, not simply appointing corporate lackeys to these positions at charter or voucher schools and narrowing down the only choices parents have to “Take It” or “Leave It.”

We need people. Real live people who can come into our schools and do the actual work with students.

What an idea! Real people to do the work, instead of machines!

Thats innovation!

 

Categories Class size, Common Core, Innovation

Anthony Cody Dissects Alexander Russo’s Defense of Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2019 //
19

 

Anthony Cody was taken aback when he saw that pundit Alexander Russo was critical of the media for ganging up against Betsy DeVos when she explained at a budget hearing why she was defunding the Special Olympics. Russo seemed to think that the media critique of DeVos may have been the work of “advocates and trolls,” special interests blowing up a story that was a Nothingburger. Russo treated the hearing as a ho-hum event, nothing new.

But Cody, who sat behind DeVos throughout the hearing, saw plenty that was new.

First, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro grilled DeVos about the new report by the Network for Public Education which documented that the federal Charter Schools Program had wasted nearly $1 billion on charter schools that either never opened or closed soon after opening. The basic issue was that the Department of Education was handing out millions of dollars without fact-checking the applications. Yet DeVos was seeking a $60 million increase for this slipshod, wasteful program while asking to cut or eliminate many other programs. Russo didn’t find that newsworthy.

There was another important story that Russo found to be not newsworthy. Anthony Cody became part of that story because of the expression on his face as he sat directly behind DeVos.

He writes:

“In fact, I wound up being a part of a whole OTHER viral story that Russo doesn’t even mention – the moment when Lucille Roybal-Allard asks DeVos to explain her absurd belief that larger class sizes may benefit students. And although I am indeed an advocate (if not a troll) I had very little to do with this clip going viral — 8.4 million views at last count.”

Cody complains that Russo has tried to set himself up as the “ethical minder” of education journalism. But anyone with an ethical barometer should be appalled every day by the unethical actions of DeVos, as she rolls back civil rights protections, undercuts students who were defrauded by for-profit “colleges,” and campaigns against the nation’s public schools. She is a novelty: the first person to lead either the Department of Education (established in 1980) or the U.S. Office of Education (established in 1867) who was actively opposed to public schools. That should be a daily story, kind of like having an Environmental Protection Agency head who doesn’t believe in protecting the environment.

I have my own beef with Russo.

In the spring of 2010, I published The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

It got a lot of attention because I had been deeply embedded in prominent rightwing think tanks (the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute), and in the book  I renounced policies and a worldview I had espoused for years. It became a national bestseller. The very fact that anyone had changed her mind was a big deal.

Many months later, I was contacted by Russo. He invited me to meet with him at a cafe near my home in Brooklyn. We had a nice getting-to-know-you chat. I told him that I had cast the deciding vote in his favor as a judge of the Spencer Fellowships, and he thanked me. Towards the end of our meeting, he asked if I would be willing to read his book about the Green Dot charter chain and write a blurb for the jacket. I agreed to do so. I found the book informative and I wrote a blurb.

Some weeks later, a friend sent me Russo’s latest article, in which he criticized me and said I could not be trusted because I changed my mind and could do it again. I am paraphrasing here. Basically, he implied that I was an intellectual or political whore, lacking in sincerity or conviction.

I was stunned. As soon as I got over the shock of being attacked by someone I thought was a friend, I called his publisher and asked to speak to his editor. When I reached her, I said I wanted my blurb off his book. She explained that the jacket was in production, and it was too late. I read to her what Alexander Russo had written about me, and there was a long pause. She said, “I agree with you. We will take your blurb off the jacket.”

I have never mentioned his name since then, and hope I never again have reason to do so.

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Class size, Education Reform, Ethics, Media
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